Oxfam ED Barry Coates in Horn of Africa

Looking out from my room in
Nairobi, it is hard to believe that only a few hundred
kilometres to the north, there are over four hundred
thousand people crowded into a refugee camp, having fled
from the 21st Century’s first major famine. We go to visit
Dadaab camp tomorrow.

The footage on TV and across
the internet has made the sight of refugees from Somalia
arriving in Dadaab after harrowing journeys all too
familiar. But today, when I arrived in Nairobi, I heard much
more about the plight of the people we don’t see. Across
northern Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia there are over 13
million people caught in this crisis. Coming from a country
like New Zealand, the scale is hard to comprehend.

The deepest impact is in Somalia, a country wracked by
conflict, without a functioning government for decades and
without the infrastructure or services that we take for
granted. And the drought is severe, the worst in 60 years
for some areas. People are desperate but getting aid to the
people who need it in Somalia is extremely challenging.

Today I had the privilege of meeting some of our Oxfam
team and a programme officer from one of the local partner
organisations that Oxfam New Zealand donors are supporting.
It was inspiring to hear about this great work from such
passionate people. Unfortunately, these organisations are
unable to work across all areas of Somalia because they
cannot get access. The difficulties were highlighted by news
reports today of people killed in fighting along the border
between Kenya and Somalia.

Through our partners,
Oxfam is now reaching more than 750,000 people in Somalia
and over 2 million across the region. But these people need
additional help, and there are many more who we cannot yet
reach. Oxfam is trying to raise enough funds to achieve this
goal.

The scale is huge. There are over 13 million
people affected by the drought and the most credible
estimates say that 750,000 people are at risk of starvation
as a result of this crisis. A lack of urgent action now
would put the rising death toll in Somalia on the scale of
Rwanda or the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. This must not be
allowed to happen.

Funding is urgent and
crucial, but so is access. Twenty aid agencies, including
Oxfam, published an open letter last week urging the
international community to "put people's lives before
politics if we are to stand any chance of aiding people
suffering from the famine in Somalia."

The agencies
said that while aid was getting through in many areas, "it
is not at the scale needed to address the enormity of the
crisis and hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the
balance." They warned that with the coming rains expected to
bring the threat of deadly disease, restrictions were still
preventing the rapid boost in aid that was so desperately
needed to save lives.

Managing this crisis without
an even larger loss of life will take more money, and Oxfam
is appealing for New Zealanders to be even more generous in
the months ahead. But it will also need a far more intensive
effort by all governments to put pressure on the warring
parties to stop the fighting and allow humanitarian access.
We need all-inclusive dialogue, a cessation of hostilities,
unhindered passage of aid, and removal of restrictions.

It won’t be easy to achieve. But it is absolutely
necessary to prevent this crisis from becoming one of the
world’s major catastrophes. After the genocide in Rwanda,
the world promised “never again.” Now is the time to
act.

Nelson Mandela, then Deputy President of the African National Congress of South Africa, raises his fist in the air while addressing the Special Committee Against Apartheid in the General Assembly Hall. UN Photo/P. Sudhakaran More>>